Trigger and Content Warning for mentions of domestic and sexual abuse.

The movie “Redeeming Love” was released in theaters on January 21, 2022. It was directed by D.J. Caruso, who worked closely with Rivers to create the script for the movie. 

This movie was based on the award winning romance novel by Francine Rivers written in 1991, and in the last few years my sister and I have both read the book close to five times, so when they announced a movie adaptation was being made my sister and I were both so excited to go see it in theaters. Unfortunately, she left for college shortly before it was released so we weren’t able to watch it together until recently. 

The novel is about a young lady named Angel who works as a prostitute in a town called Pair-A-Dice. She is rescued from her brothel by Michael Hosea and goes through a lot of self reflection and improvement to find herself. With Michael’s help, she learns to live on her own and goes on to find her own purpose, and eventually falls in love with Michael.

Angel is played by the stunning Abigail Cowen, acting alongside Tom Lewis as Michael. Both of them did an amazing job of portraying the connection between their characters as the plot progresses. 

There are multiple antagonists in this story, but the central conflict surrounds the character Duke, who “bought” Angel at only 8 years old. Justice is served at the end of the story, when the townsmen find out about Duke’s strong preference for younger girls and hang him from his own building. 

Duke is played by one of my all-time favorite actors, Eric Dane, who starred in the popular series “Euphoria” as Mark Jacobs and played the character Mark Sloan on “Grey’s Anatomy” for many seasons. 

Dane does an amazing job at portraying conflicted and hateable guys as we have seen from his past roles, and his role in “Redeeming Love” is another example of this. His character Duke has no redeeming qualities, but Dane is still able to make the audience understand why Angel didn’t hate him at first. 

In the flashback scenes, you get to see the story of how Duke and Angel met, featuring Livi Birch as young Angel. The casting directors did a wonderful job at finding a child actress who looked like a young Cowen. Birch also does an exquisite innocent act, making the audience more sympathetic to Angel’s story. 

One of the best parts about the movie is that it stayed mostly true to the plot of the book. While I always support reading the book over a movie adaptation, I would say that if you were to watch the movie with no prior knowledge of the book, it would still be an amazing romance movie.

I’m usually not a huge fan of romance books because I feel like many authors make their female protagonists weak and desperate for a man. “Redeeming Love” made a point of letting Angel discover life for herself. 

When Michael first rescues Angel from the saloon, she had been beaten by her bodyguard for misbehaving. Michael takes her away to his house on a farm, and Angel is insistent that she will work off her debt and be a free woman. 

But, since she’d been a prostitute for her whole life, she didn’t know how to do anything of use. Michael loves her anyway and gently teaches her how to cook, clean, and work.

They started to build a connection in the years they spent together, but Angel was never satisfied. She still felt trapped and owned by their marriage, the same way she had felt under Duke and everyone else who used her. 

Angel runs away multiple times back to Pair-A-Dice, searching for a sense of freedom and independence that she had never felt before. On the last time she ran away, she found herself captured by her abuser Duke once again. 

She was the one who revealed to the townsmen that Duke was a pedophile, and ran away with all the children she saw in his home. 

The liberation of those children and the end of Duke gave her a sense of completion, but she still wasn’t done. She proceeded to open a home for any women in need of education, to help them learn the vital skills that Michael taught her. 

This part of the story is so important to me. It shows that even though she had a really horrible life up to that point, she was able to use that to help others and stand on her own two feet. She had been beaten down and broken, but she would always fight back. 

As a feminist, I love an independent woman story, but the part that really seals the deal for me  is the end. 

Years later, Michael’s brother-in-law Paul, played by Logan Marshall-Green, shows up to her home. He delivers the news that Michael never remarried and was still waiting for her to come back to him, this time on her own terms. 

He loved her enough to not only let her go, but to also understand that she needed to find out who she was for herself. He loved her even when she wasn’t there. That’s what makes the story so beautiful, that Michael loved her in a selfless way even after she hurt him. 

Angel returned to Michael’s farm, they were reunited, and they all lived happily ever after. 

While the movie and the book are very similar, there is one part in the end that they changed. In the beginning of the book, it’s revealed that Angel’s birth name was Sarah, and when Duke changed it she kept her original name a secret from everyone else and never told anyone, even Michael. 

In the movie, Angel tells Michael her name right at the end. I understand why they added that part for a more Hollywood-like ending, but I feel like it cheapens the meaning behind the name a little bit.

She kept her name a secret because it was the only thing she could ever truly call her own, and the only thing she had kept from her mother. Something that deep wasn’t meant to be shared, and the fact that she never told Michael in the book was empowering. 

There is a little bit of a religious aspect to this book, as Michael is an adamant Christian and relies on his God to help him love Angel through rough times. 

Overall, the movie is amazing. The messages within it are so inspiring and the directors did such a good job of maintaining the storyline in the book. It’s now one of my favorite movies ever, and I would recommend it to anyone who even slightly enjoys romance movies with a hint of revenge.